Cataloging best practices

Cataloging is the act of assembling metadata information about a resource. The goal is to help library users find the most useful resources. Cataloging can be as easy as just providing a title and description or more complex such that library users will be able to

get adequate presentation of the content of the resource (titles, descriptions, keywords, audience and more)

get information on the status of the rights concerning the resource (copyright, access conditions, prices)

While extensive knowledge of a resource is beneficial to cataloging, it is not required. That being said, a cataloger needs to make an effort to find the necessary information to fully describe a resource. And, a cataloger needs to adhere to cataloging best practices that include using controlled vocabularies correctly and paying heed to the definitions of each field being cataloged.

Each DLESE metadata framework has a set of cataloging best practices (the documentation link under each framework). Currently, the best practices are organized and tied to a specific metadata field. For each field, the cataloging best practices aim to provide things to do, things to avoid and examples. To access the best practices, please refer directly to the overview page for each metadata framework (left-side menu) or click on the quick links below:

ADN metadata framework version 0.6.50

Documentation (provides cataloging best practice within the documentation of the framework; requires knowledge of the metadata field of interest)

Annotation metadata framework version 0.1.01

Documentation (provides cataloging best practice within the documentation of the framework; requires knowledge of the metadata field of interest)

Collection metadata framework version 1.0.0

Documentation (provides cataloging best practice within the documentation of the framework; requires knowledge of the metadata field of interest)

News and opportunities metadata framework version 1.0.0

Documentation (provides cataloging best practice within the documentation of the framework; requires knowledge of the metadata field of interest)